Self-Esteem, Delinquent Peers, and Delinquency: A Test of the Self-Enhancement Thesis

The authors test Howard B. Kaplan's self-enhancement thesis, which argues that self-esteem is negatively related to delinquency but that delinquency is positively related to later self-esteem. Previous research on these countervailing causal effects has not been supportive, possibly because of a failure to specify and test for intervening mechanisms that may link self-esteem and delinquency. The authors focus on the impact of delinquent peers as a central intervening variable. Using panel data from a sample of urban adolescents, they find that low self-esteem does not increase either associations with delinquent peers or delinquent behavior. Delinquent associations, however, do have significant self-enhancing effects on later self-esteem, but delinquent behavior does not. These findings are similar across gender and across racial/ethnic groups and when alternative measures of self-esteem are used